Friday, February 8, 2013

Not yer grandma's scratchbuilt Heldrake

Is it worth building?

Est-ce qu'il vaut le coût du travail?

Ever since the new 2012 Chaos Codex came out, I had been feeling ambivalent about the Heldrake. The model is expensive and butt ugly. As a matter of principle, I had decided early on that I would never buy this abomination. It is a textbook example of the marketing technique of GW to push uninspired sculpts with amazingly broken rules. It was also blacklisted for me as it is a vehicle, in essence overpriced simply because it can still be taken out with a single lucky missile.

Awhile back I took a shot at making a Forgefiend. I should have playtested first before investing the time in the scratchbuild, because I was astounded at how badly it performed time and again. With only a 36 inch threat radius, it would consistently be just out of range of decent targets and would get whacked before it would be able to get itself into range.

That said, I have since had to reevaluate my position on the Heldrake. Playtesting and extensive testimonials from the Internet have shown me the potential of this flyer. In my first game, it cooked the banner bike from the Dark Angels, and in my second, it brutalized a large Helion squad and cleaned up a jetbike squad that was hanging out near my table edge. It just got nastier in my latest game against a marine spam list. It cooked four different squads single-handedly and cleared an objective.

So what distinguishes it from the other vehicles in the codex? Firstly, it's a flyer, hit only on 6's. 2nd, it has an AP3 flamer with Torrent and Soulblaze. In my first game I didn't read the rules thoroughly enough but in my 2nd I saw just how nasty that combo of rules can be. In brief, it has very good odds of roasting its 170 points worth, straight out of the gate on its turn of arrival.

My reaction to the original model was viscerally negative. I don't know what possessed the design team to think a dragon would look cool in a science fiction game. It's about as ridiculous as space marines riding on organic wolves. Anything would have been an improvement, from some deformed demonic flying defiler thing to a possessed version of a stormraven.

What turns me off certain scratchbuilds are their tendency of sticking to the original dragon aesthetic. The plagueworm idea is neat but what I really wanted was something more mechanical and less organic. This one is really cool too. Make sure you scroll down to the fully painted photo. It really is sick. Dokclaw found this one too. It's nice as well, but uses the Heldrake model as a base, which means you will be financially encouraging GW to produce more lame sculpts. This one is kitbashed from a blight drone. And this one uses the forgefiend bits.

My hull is a miniature Thunderhawk transporter mixed with a manta ray. I also borrowed heavily from the look of certain hovercrafts. Also, the flyer was to be wholly possessed by a Nurgle daemon. Thus the hull is intentionally buckling and twisting, and not because I can't cut plasticard in straight lines :).

Originally, I wanted it to look somewhat like a wasp with a bloated belly. That plan got cancelled when I began looking at hovercraft and realised the rear fans looked better. The cockpit was to be something between a Valkyrie and a Stormtalon, but more slanted.

I like to have some realism, so I had to figure out how it would fly. My wife doesn't believe it could ever fly as is, but I have more faith.

It uses a duel fan system, one pair in the wings that lifts it off the ground like a helicopter or a harrier (I used to love building models of this plane when I was young), and another pair on the rear that propels it forwards. The wings are so wide, though, I imagine it can glide somewhat. I used to look at Popular Mechanics a lot as a kid, and I remembered their gliders with their massive wings. These were definitely in my thoughts as I designed my own.

Ultimately, aesthetic sensibilities governed my final decision, as I clipped the wings much shorter than I had originally created them.

BaleflamerLa lance-flamme de Bale

To power the awesome baleflamer weapon, in its underslung transport area, it carries poisonous radioactive fuel/sludge in massive barrels. This fits the Nurgle fluff a little better.

Vector strikingL'attaque vecteur

To represent its ability to Vector Strike, I got the idea of corpse bombs. These will be corpses that will be stuffed with explosives, toxins, and shrapnel (think dirty bomb made from organic hospital waste with a little C4 to give it added kick). They will then be hung under the wings in metal nets that can be released using a latch system.

Parts list

Les morceaux

The materials list includes:

a tube of PC7
greenstuff
a sheet of plasticard
lots of sprues
toothpaste tube aluminium (at least ten tubes' worth)
Q-tips
blisterpack clear plastic
guitar string for tubing
a $ Store set of fans from 2 car air fresheners
grating from an old wastepaper basket
the seat from another $ Store purchase, a remote control car
the circuit board from said RC vehicle